Well, at Least it's not Another Scarf?

Hiya from a.,

I seem to have developed a new obsession that is taking away from the making of yet another scarf.  It appears that I like to make cases for my e-reader.  I was content with the second one I made, the one I showed you.  But I took out all these books about felting from the library and I always have animal based yarn just floating around, so I decided to crochet and felt a new slipcase.  In one of the books I learned an interesting fact - in felting crochet (in comparison to knit) shrinks/fulls the most in width, not in height.  So your height only needs to be a little larger than the desired finish, but you need extra space in the width.  I made the initial crochet about 2 inches wider than it had to be and sure enough it came out shrunk to just easily slide in the kobo.

I did a stitch where it alternates single and double crochet which gives the fabric a denser texture than if you stick with one stitch throughout.  I used a medium sized bead in place of a button as a closure.  I did add a little extra zip to the other side of the case:

I learned after some trial and error that I am not great at just cutting out of felt if I don't have a pattern (my freehand tree looked like a sad alien), but I did manage to free cut the letter A out of black felt.  I then used embroidery floss to add colour and texture to the A.  There is bright pink, yellow, orange, and green in the A.  I then used a little bit of tacky glue to hold it in place and stitched it on with black floss.  I think it came out cute.

The other thing I did was an organizational change.  With us now having to gaming systems we needed somewhere to put our wii titles (and our spillover dvds). r. had already sacrificed a shelf to the xbox cause so it was my turn, I had to give up my yarn stash shelf.  Luckily we had gotten a gift basket for Christmas which I could use to hold the yarn.  This is what it looked like at first:

I am sure that you dear readers are aware that a beige wicker basket isn't quite our style.  Using spray paint, however, is our style.  Here is how it looks now:

Black gloss spray paint is everybody's friend.  The basket did have a couple places where spokes were poking up a bit and I didn't want them to catch my pretty yarn.  Just as I was taking about sewing a lining the perfect fabric showed up from e.  in a great and wonderful box from the flbs.  Seriously e. has amazing taste in fabric and here is a peek at the lining (you can just see it poking up around the edges of the basket):

I has pink and has skeletons of cute animals.  How awesome is that!!!!!  Storage solutions should always involve skulls.

see you space cowboy....